Book Review: "Their Fractured Light" by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

Title: Their Fractured Light

Authors: Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner
Series: "Starbound Trilogy" #3
Genre: YA Sci-Fi Romance

Page Length: 428 pages

Publication Date: December 1, 2015

Rating: 4 // 5 stars

Goodreads

Book 1 Review

Book 2 Review

I binged this entire trilogy (plus a novella) over the course of four days and loved every second of it. I really enjoyed this installment and thought the ending was very fitting, though I still think book 2 is my favorite of them all.

Like with the last book, the action starts from the very beginning in this book and keeps going. There was a bit of a lag towards the middle/end in action but the very strong beginning and the character development throughout more than made up for it. I think that the pacing was rather good overall even if some of these scenes did lag.

I also think I was a bit confused still on the whole issue with the other-universe beings. I don't think I understood it well-enough in the first book so that by the time I finished this one, I understood it more but definitely not as much as I'd hoped I would have.

I also liked how this book ended. I think that it could have gone so many different ways but not only do I love this ending, but it also just makes sense within the world and characters. I think that while everything in this trilogy was wrapped up nicely, there's also definite potential for future novellas or spin-offs dealing with the aftermath. I don't know if that would happen, but I would like it!

What really drove this for me were the characters. Not only do we have to new amazing characters to read about, but we also have the other main characters from previous books making an appearance and coming together with our new characters. I'm a big sucker for a group of characters who have to come together when the odds are stacked against them. Also, this book felt to me like the beginnings of a found-family situation and I loved it. I would honestly love to see more of these characters in the future and I'm excited to go back and reread one of the novellas I haven't read yet.

Overall, I really enjoyed this final installment and this trilogy as a whole. It's been sitting on my bookshelves for years and I'm both happy and proud that I've finally read it and that I enjoyed it. When I get actual shelves again I can't wait to have these on my Kristoff/Kaufman/Spooner shelf along with all the other great sci-fi novels they've written.

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Thanks for reading!

xoxo

Lauren

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Book Review: "This Shattered World" by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

Title: This Shattered World

Authors: Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

Series: "Starbound Trilogy" #2

Genre: YA Sci-Fi Romance

Page Length: 394 pages

Publication Date: December 23rd, 2014

Rating: 4.5 // 5 stars

Goodreads

Book 1 Review

Okay so I really enjoyed book 1. I thought it was a solid start to this trilogy and I was definitely invested in the world and characters. However, book 2 was so much better! I loved this installment and I'm so glad that I read it right after book 1 so that everything was fresh in my mind.

This installment follows a new pair of main characters, though characters from book 1 do make an appearance. We're also on a brand new planet dealing with different plot lines, though the big overarching reveal from book 1 is expanded upon in this book a lot.

From the very first page there's action. We don't mess around with any info-dumps or long expositions and the action is pretty much instantaneous. The pace is set and the authors run with it. I really enjoyed this storyline and thought it was way better than the last book's storyline (even if I enjoyed book 1, it was lacking in some areas). A lot happens and there's many sub-plot lines from the overarching trilogy plot. Just the amount of action and plot development in this book raised it above book 1 immensely.

Like with the last book, the big thing that drove my enjoyment of this one was the characters. I loved the characters in the last book and I loved these characters as well. I was so happy when Tarver and Lilac showed up in this book because just getting to see them again helped connect me to the story. But the main characters were Jubilee and Flynn and they were just wonderful to read from. This was a classic case of some of my favorite tropes (forbidden romance, enemies-to-lovers, etc) and I loved how it was done. I'm quite fond of these characters and how their story was told, not to mention all the side characters that were added in!

I'm very happy with the plot twists and the ending. I think that this book played out in a really good ways and I didn't always see what was coming which made for more impactful twists. Overall, I really thought that the ending was good and both tied back in with the first book as well as set up the third book.

To finish out this review, I really liked this book and thought it was a lot better than book 1. I cannot wait to see what happens in the next and final book just so that I can be reunited with these characters as well as see how everything wraps up.

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Thanks for reading!

xoxo

Lauren

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Book Review: "These Broken Stars" by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

Title: These Broken Stars

Authors: Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

Series: "Starbound Trilogy" #1

Genre: YA Sci-Fi Romance

Page Length: 378 pages

Publication Date: December 10, 2013
Rating: 4 // 5 stars

Goodreads

When I originally picked this book up, it was because I'd just read Illuminae and loved it, so when I saw Amie had another sci-fi trilogy with beautiful covers, I knew I had to pick it up. I'm a bit ashamed to say that it took me years to finally read it but that I have finally done so and really enjoyed it!

From the first page, there was something that felt so familiar about the writing, which I no doubt attribute to the fact that I've read other books by Amie. The writing was easy to fall into and I read this book rather quickly in only two sittings across an afternoon. There is just something so light about the writing in this book and I really enjoyed it.

The characters themselves were what drove this story. I really enjoyed reading from Tarver and Lilac's POVs. I liked the alternation between each and I also liked the little transcripts of interview in between each chapter. More so, I liked the characters themselves. They were just really fun to read from and I really enjoyed reading about their character and relationship growth.

I will say it was the characters that primarily drove the story for me. There were a lot of things in the plot I liked, but there was a bit of drag in the repetitive-ness of their journey and I was a bit confused on the big plot things at the end. However, I am excited to read the next books so that I can get a better understanding of what all is going on.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. I definitely had some feels but I felt like one of the big feel things wasn't as big of a deal since I kinda knew what the outcome was. But I did like this book and I'm excited to see what happens next in the series!

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Thanks for reading!

xoxo

Lauren

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Book Review: "Aurora Rising" by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Title: Aurora Rising

Authors: Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Series: "Aurora Cycle_01"

Genre: YA Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Page Length: 470 pages

Publication Date: May 7, 2019
Date Started: June 7, 2019

Date Finished: June 16, 2019

Rating: 4 // 5 stars

Goodreads

Honestly, I'm not 100% sure what to say about this book. I both liked it and felt a bit disappointed by it. I think for the most part, I enjoyed the book but there were definitely some factors that went into me not liking this as much as I'd hoped.

Before I get into the reasons I liked this book, I just want to talk a bit about how I was disappointed. I don't necessarily think it was the book itself that made me like it less. I went into this book with really high expectations, which I knew would probably hurt my reading but I couldn't exactly change my subconscious hope that this book would blow me away. Additionally, everyone is hyping up this book. People I have very similar reading tastes to talked about how much it blew them away. So I was expecting something along the lines of the brilliance of Illuminae. But I didn't really get that. Additionally, it took me a while to read this book because of personal life things and just stress in general. I don't think any of that helped and I wasn't connected to this story very much because it took me over a week to get through it.

I want to say that this is my preliminary thoughts on this book. Looking back on what was happening, I should have loved it. In terms of how this book, the characters, the story, etc and whatnot were written, it was done very well. But I was stressed and it took me so long to read this book that I didn't connect to the characters and was left feeling disappointed. So, these are my thoughts for now but I do plan on rereading this book before the second comes out so that I can (hopefully) have a better experience reading it.

But like I said, looking back on this book I think it was done very well. The plot, the logistics of the world, the pure creativity that must have gone into it--all were great. The characters were awesome but I do think that there were too many POV changes. We could have stuck with just 3 of them rather than everyone getting a POV but never in a consistent order or in equal amounts. What's the purpose of giving a character a POV when their chapters are less than a page long? But I did like the characters--especially Fin! His sass, his struggles, just him in general made me so happy.

Overall, I don't want to talk too much about this book just because I don't feel like I read it at the right time. I was so excited to read it, I was reading quickly, and I was enjoying it until I became stressed in my personal life and that severely inhibited my reading experience.

I am very much looking forward to rereading this book to see how things change--I've already forgotten a lot of it too because it took me so long to read. I also think this series has a lot of potential and I'm definitely excited to see where the story goes with how things were left at the end of this book.

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Thanks for reading!

xoxo

Lauren

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Let's Talk: "Obsidio" by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff Book Review!

Title: Obsidio

Authors: Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Series: "Illuminae_Files_03"

Genre: YA Science Fiction

Page Length: 615 pages

Publication Date: March 13, 2018

Date Started: May 26, 2018

Date Finished: July 17, 2018

Rating: 5/5 amazing stars!

Goodreads

Book 1 Review

Book 2 Review

Don’t let the amount of time it took me to read this book fool you: it was awesome! Every summer for the past three years, I’ve fallen into severe reading slumps where I read maybe 5 books over the course of three months. It’s just hard for me to read. But that is the only reason that it took me so long to read this book! 

It was fast-paced and kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time I read it! Especially the last 200 pages…I couldn’t stop and then all of a sudden I had finished it!

What I loved most about this book was seeing the development that each of these characters had undergone from the first and second books to this one! I can see the character arcs that Jay and Amie wrote and I’m in awe! I just love each and every one of these flawed, beautiful characters so much. 

I thought that it had the right mix of action and suspense and romance. The pacing was perfect and the points of view were on point (haha, see what I did there?). Overall, this book was just so well executed. 


That’s all I can really say without spoiling it but I will leave you with these final thoughts: I thought that Obsidio was a fantastic finale to this trilogy. I’ve been reading this story for three and a half years now and I can’t believe that it’s over. I’ve had so many awesome memories because of this trilogy: I’ve made friends, gone to signings, met the amazing authors, and so much more all thanks to this trilogy! It’s heartbreaking to be finished with it but it’s an extremely amazing feeling to finally know how all of my favorite characters end up! I can’t wait to reread this book because whenever I’ve reread an Illuminae Files book, I’ve always ended up loving it even more than the first time around.

I highly, highly recommend this trilogy…especially the audiobooks! I think my next read through with definitely be 100% from the audiobooks because they really are masterpieces in themselves! 

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Thanks for reading!

xoxo

Lauren

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Top 5 Wednesday: Auto-Buy Sci-Fi and Fantasy Authors

Hello everyone and welcome to another Top 5 Wednesday! This week's theme is Auto-Buy Sci-Fi and Fantasy Authors! This was interesting for me because even if I love an author's books, I usually don't automatically buy it. Of course there are exceptions to this rule. There are a few authors outside of this list who are also auto-buy authors, but they don't write in this genre so I'll most likely put them in a different post at some point. Let's go ahead and just get on into it. 

Coming in at number 5 we have Cassandra Clare, who wrote The Mortal Instruments, The Infernal Devices, The Dark Artifices, and more. She's also co-written a few books. However, I've only read the stuff that she's written for the Shadowhunters universe. I haven't read any of her other co-written stuff so I'm not sure if this is your stereotypical auto-buy situation, but anything she writes for Shadowhunters or any other fantasy/paranormal works I will buy. 

At number 4 I decided to combine Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, since they co-wrote one of my favorite trilogies. Since then, I have started collecting their other works. I would definitely say that they're some of my auto buy authors now. Plus, I met these authors and they're so amazing that I am honored to be able to buy all of their books.

Number 3 is, obviously, Stephenie Meyer. Not a lot of people are as familiar with her science fiction works, but I read The Host YEARS ago and I absolutely fell in love. Since then, she's released an adult thriller that I have yet to read but am super excited to get to soon. Ever since I expanded past Twilight to read The Host, I've seen how amazing her writing and stories are, and how unique they are from each other. I will buy anything she writes. Period.




Number 2 shouldn't surprise anyone: J.K. Rowling. She wrote Harry Potter and I will buy anything she writes. I'm currently working on reading her other series under her pen name, and I can't wait. She's such an inspiration and HP has done so much for me throughout my life and childhood.

And my number 1 auto-buy author for this category, and in general, is Sarah J. Maas. I was just getting back into reading when I discovered her books and I fell in love. Her two series have helped me through so much in my life, connected me with amazing friends, and have just let me escape my boring life for a fantastical one. I will read anything she writes when they are released and I'm so excited for 4 new Sarah books this year!

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Thanks for reading! Who are you favorite auto-buy authors? Let me know in the comments below (although, currently I'm having a glitchy system that hasn't been letting me respond. Rest assured: I see your comments!).

xoxo

Lauren

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Follow this blog by clicking "Follow" on the right hand column! Add me to your Google+ Circles on the left hand column! New content every month from Reviews to Hauls to Tags! Don't forget to check out all the other parts of this blog by following the different links at the top of the page! 

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